Step change

The grand, sweeping staircases of old country houses are loaded with centuries of architectural, romantic and ghostly allure

- Melanie Cable-Alexander

WHEN the author Emma Craigie was a child, her father bought Ston Easton Park in Somerset.

This was in 1964, a time when many great houses were under threat of demolition, but some, including Ston Easton, had been saved by preservation orders. In this case, it was the house’s staircase that had been singled out as a feature of special importance. As are many grand country-house staircases, it was designed to impress: a sweeping ascent from the reception hall to the principal rooms, a visible symbol of status and hospitality. For Ms Craigie’s younger brother, Thomas, however, it was simply the perfect place to hide things.

‘The original 18th-century wooden staircase had a copper pipe above the balustrade, covered in red velvet as a handrail,’ she recalls. ‘My brother used to sneak chocolates from a cupboard and then stuff the wrappers in the hollow copper tube.’ It wasn't until the house was sold in 1978 that his secret was uncovered. ‘The sweet wrappers went all the way up inside the staircase,’ she laughs. ‘It’s now part of a family legend.’

The fact that Ston Easton's staircase was specifically protected shows how central such structures are to the architectural identity and backbone of a country house. ‘The staircase has been one of the essential places of architectural expression in the English country house since the 16th century,’ elaborates architectural historian Jeremy Musson. They also provide arteries of human intrigue and drama, whether for shedding sweet wrappers, passing secret messages—as at Harewood House in West Yorkshire, where servants carried illicit notes between household staff and guests up the cantilever stairs—or playing host to ghostly apparitions, such as the famous ‘Brown Lady’ of Raynham Hall, Norfolk, whose spectral image was first published in COUNTRY LIFE almost 90 years ago and remains debated today.